A-Z of Services:

Light nuisance

Service information

What do you want to do?

The Council has a legal duty to investigate complaints about light nuisance.

If the Council receives a complaint about light nuisance it will investigate to determine if a nuisance does exist. We will try to find an informal solution to the problem but legal powers are available to tackle light nuisance.

Reporting light nuisance problems

There is little in the way of formal guidance as to what constitutes a legally actionable light nuisance. However, we investigate light nuisance in much the same way as we investigate other kinds of nuisance e.g. noise.

This is intended to establish whether the problem is sufficiently severe as to warrant legal action by the Council. We make this judgement against the following criteria:

The duration of the nuisance (how long does it last for when it happens, seconds, minutes or hours?)

The frequency of the nuisance (how often does it happen, daily, weekly or infrequently?)

The seriousness of the nuisance (does it materially affect someone's use of their house? The usual critical factor is whether it disturbs sleep).

The motives behind the action causing the nuisance (is it malicious or does the problem arise from ordinary behaviour?).

The sensitivity of the complainant (is the person who is complaining 'ordinary' or overly sensitive to the light?)